I am starting to feel a bit more comfortable with the new job and finally am starting to get out a bit on the weekends. Yesterday we drove down to Algadones, Mexico to get my teeth cleaned. To get there we pass through Yuma, AZ. One of our favorite activities driving into Yuma or even into Blythe, California is to see what vegetables are being grown. The Colorado River allows these communities to farm the desert.

These are onions plants in nice neat rows. Below you can see the trick to how these rows are maintained.

The top photo was processed in Topaz Adjust – color pop setting with some adjustments done in Aperture before and after. The bottom photo is processed in Aperture alone.

I am disappointed in myself … I forgot to look at my camera settings and just started to shoot when Carl pulled over to the side of the road. Thus the aperture was only at f/4 for the top photo. The Canon Powershot SX10 has limited aperture range and the best I could have done was f/8.. but still.

Top photo is 50% of original size. Bottom photo is 1024… faster to open. Not sure which is best way to show this.

Taken this morning from BLM Short-Term Camping Area off Kuhn Rd. looking west to Dome Rock Mountain Range.

I had not ridden my bike through this area before and was surprised to find so much green scrub pine. I spent about an hour and half poking around this area, taking photos, listening to birds and ground squirrels — mainly trying to catch a quail family. I plan to return as it is easy to get to, the dirt roads are intended for RVs thus easy to ride my bike, and I only explored a fraction of what’s out there.

This is the Colorado River as taken from the CRIT (Colorado River Indian Tribes) land in Parker, AZ, which is 35 miles north of Quartzsite. The land on the other side of the river is California. We discovered this peaceful little spot last November, actually Thanksgiving Day, when we went up to the CRIT Casino for the Turkey buffet. I never get tired of looking at the mountains, but sometimes I miss the water . This spot is an easy cure for that. I suspect that now it is Memorial Day weekend, this place might not be so peaceful.

This is last night’s sunset… without a bit of post processing. After attending John Greengo’s class yesterday I decided to play with the Exposure setting on my camera… I have a Canon PowerShot SD 950, which is a point and shoot camera… but as far as P&S goes, its pretty good. I do have the ability to change the exposure by up to 2 stops in either direction, thus I experimented last night.

What I learned was that by increasing the expo by 1/3, it changed the shutter speed to a slower speed (from 1/500 to 1/250). Since the camera was on a tripod the slower speed was o.k and in fact I think the mountains are clearer on the slower speed.

And it did make for a “better” histogram.

Anyway, I’m finding this free photo class immensely informative… even for my point & shoot camera. At least I understand its limitation a whole lot better. I’m doing my best not to have DSLR envy… I simply can’t afford one so that’s that.

This is located at the Taihu Resort in Wuxi, China. We stayed here on business, but the resort is popular among the vacationing Chinese. One time when we stayed here, there was a Buddhist convention of sorts. I loved the mornings here. Very peaceful designed to strengthen our inner spirits. I hope this photo captures some of that feeling for you.

Note that this was taken with a lower resolution camera… I reduced the photo by 50% to help hide a lot of the resolution problems. I doctored up the coloring using iPhoto but can not figure out exactly what I did. When I look at the original photo, it does not have the same depth as this one.